Mr. Punch

“Pamela” of Atlas Shrugs has a very funny and over the top encomium to Charles Johnson at the Blogometer today.

Who is your favorite political blogger? Favorite non-political blogger?

Little Green Footballs. Hands down. When the history books are written, Charles Johnson will surely go down as a great American that made a critical difference between victory and defeat. His role has been largely ignored but so what? Most of the greats are ignored in their time. Van Gogh was ignored in his time too, although I don’t think Charles can draw… but you get my meaning. The media wants Charles and the blogs for that matter to just go away. But just the opposite is happening, the blogs are dictating the national dialog. What’s on the blogs today, is in the news 3,4 sometimes a week later.

Now, while you could certainly draw an interesting comparison between Charles Johnson and Vincent van Gogh, it wouldn’t be in terms of Johnson’s unrecognized genius. More generally, Pamela’s claim reminds me of this passage on palmistry from John Sladek’s 1974 book, The New Apocrypha.

Palmists are of course in no doubt as to who was right. As with all cranks, they feel they haven’t been given a fair hearing and that orthodoxy is ganging up on them. [quoting palmistry author Noel Jaquin] “The reward of the pioneer is so often the ridicule of his fellow-men. We are not very much more just today. Of recent years men of genius have been deprived of their living and literally hounded to death by the ridicule of their more ignorant brethren.” How true, how true. They laughed at Galileo, they laughed at Darwin, they laughed at Edison … and they laughed at Punch and Judy.

I’ve always had a soft spot for the Sladek novella,”The Communicants”. Even though it’s 37 years old it’s still a wicked take on modern mores and desk life. Chucky and Pam would be right at home in its surrealistic paranioa.

Ah, yes the hero’s journey. I too am misunderestimated an misunappreciated in my own time. But you’ll see… at four o’clock I’m going to make everyone two feet tall. Genius. Pure Genius… they laughed at Jack Ruby too…

STAFFER: Now, look here, Mr Vann, I’ve heard all your predictions about how the war in Vietnam is failing, but I have a Congressional report here that absolutely states that this fighting will be over within the next six months. What do you say to that?
VANN: Six months? Oh, no, I’m sure we can hold out longer than that.

Never having actually read much of LGF, I found that I’d bought into the myth that Johnson writes some vaguely right-wing stuff, and the commenters go it like piranhas. But actually, he attracts these nuts for a reason. The best analysis of his bile is by Denis the Peasant. For instance, this is masterly.

“Van Gogh was ignored in his time too, although I don’t think Charles can draw… but you get my meaning.”

No! This is a huge understatement! Theo van Gogh had to get killed so that a significant number of people recognized his name. Johnson only needed the pajama media fiasco to achieve the same level of publicity!
:D

How can he simultaneously have made “a critical difference between victory and defeat” and “been largely ignored”? Do the troops just have this vague feeling that somewhere out there, some brave patriot is doing a really kick-ass blog?

Adam, it’s like the liberal media leading us to defeat. It’s so spiritually powerful that the GOP ownership of all three branches (and most of the media) can’t stand against it. Not even George’s faith (sorry, Faith) can withstand it.

My theory is that all of Chaz’s bike riding has given him erectile dysfunction. Seems to fit with the observable facts.

Busting on Muslims gives him that manly feeling again. Almost as good as the old days when… well, best not to dwell too deeply on it.

The thing that strikes me about him and Pamela is that they’re so gosh darn dumb. Maybe it’s rude to point that out, but whenever Chaz does something more than link to an article with a snide dig at Muslims, he displays an astounding lack of understanding and insight. With Pamela of course, it’s on display every single blog entry, along with a definite lack of facility with the English language.

They probably both come off better in the original German, as the saying goes.

Well, without any demonstrated evidence against palmistry, I don’t think it behooves one to ridicule it. Certainly, a scientific attitude would, at the least, keep an open mind on the matter until evidence against it is found. To do otherwise, in the absence of any supporting evidence for a dismissal, strikes me as both irrational and unscientific.

Peter, your ‘defence’ of palmistry sounds very like Paul Feyerabend’s tongue-in-cheek ‘defence’ of astrology. (That is, one thing Feyerabend showed is that the dismissal of astrology is not “scientific” in the sense that science was invented along with the Enlightenment. St Augustine showed it was bogus (by argument from time twins, which since entered the lore of more inventive astrologers) but without recourse to actual experiment.

However, I think that it’s possible to divide astrologers into two types. There is possibly an art of astrology as was practiced centruries ago with the birth charts of kings. There is another form which is retricted to twelve one-paragraph predictions, each for one-twelfth of the population, daily. Does one really need experiment to know that this is bogus? The predictions are so vaguely worded as to be untestable.

AFAIK, there has never been a ‘serious’ category of palmists. It’s always been a fairground sideshow kind of thing. In a Terry Pratchett book (I forget which) there’s a line like “If you’re the Great Mystero of Klatch, why are you performing card tricks in Slice, population seven?”

I posted earlier this evening on a Tim Worstall thread on the death penalty. I think it’s worthwhile for scientists and statisticians to be involved in public policy debates. Claims about the deterrent effect of judicial measures can be tested, and it’s public money well spent in doing so. Using a university budget investigating an obvious charlatan is fatuous. In short, I think you’re (probably not intentionally) misrepresenting what science is. It depends on what you call demonstrated evidence against. I can’t think of any studies actually debunking palmistry, true, but I do know that there have been studies debunking horses which can count, telepathy, spoon bending and so forth. There is also the James Randi $1M Challenge. There also isn’t any demonstrated evidence for palmistry, is there?

The thing about “scientific method” (in the Popperian/Phillett-of-Sci sense) is that it has approximately nothing to do with anything scientistes do, or what scientistes believe, or how they come to believe it. (Which was of course Feyerabend’s point.)

And I speak with all my authority as an occasional scientist and permanent science fan on this question.